This is what happens when an engineer and a crafts-person buy an old house.

Notes, images and inspiration for the renovation of a 1935 Flemish townhouse.

Sunday, 2 November 2014

Him Diamond

We're exhausted! Working a lot lately... :)

Mostly pictures:

Pim concentrated on the front rooms plaster finishing.Lots of work here.

I am anxious to have a washbasin! started working on the vanity.I give two layers of thick shellac to all the bathroom furniture,inside and out.

Drilling holes for plumbing.

Old houses, uneven floors. I stacked popsicle sticks until the vanity was level.

Then I lengthened the legs with layers of them + PVA glue.I did smooth them and paint them later, so the fix is nearly invisible.

The vanity marble was very scratched and stained.There is a large, deep rust stain that I won't be able to remove,we're just placing the washbasin on top!

After a lot of work with diamond polishing pads.

And more. I am using grit 60 through 400.I have finer grits, but I doubt if I am gonna go over 800,the windowsill is just honed and I like it like that.

We also drilled the holes for the plumbing on the marble.Diamond tools FTW.

We were unaware of templates for core drills, I just read about them yesterday.Too late to order any, so we made our own with a piece of OSB, which workedperfectly. You only need to use it until you have a groove (first pic).

Drilling, marking, drilling.

One 5 cm hole for the drain, two 1 cm holes for cold and warm water.

I also worked on the floorboards, bedroom and landing.
I wasn't happy with the finishing (dust sticks to the old finish like nobody's business, bad since the house is still super dusty).

The more I use shellac the more I like it (looks and performance). So I vacuumed, cleaned the dust with warm water only (I wrung the microfibre cloth as much as possible - it dried fast) then applied a thick layer of shellac.

I worked on a continuous length of floorboard from end to end. Started with one at a time, ended up daring to tackle 4 at a time. Working fast, it works great, and looks very good so far.